Bunny Stew
by Shadsie
Summary: Link has an interesting time hunting rabbits for Rabbitland Rescue. One of the first things he asks is "Who hunts rabbits with explosives?" There really was only one outcome to that. Sick and twisted humor for Spirit Tracks.


_**Disclaimer:**__ The Legend of Zelda and its characters (as well as its weirdness) belong to Nintendo. I am but a fan who enjoys pointing out weirdness. _

_**Notes:**__ You can blame this story on my beloved ArkNorth. First of all, he got me a 3DS for Christmas as well as Spirit Tracks (among other games), second of all, I was describing the Rabbit Rescue collection-quest to him and this scenario is pretty much what he came up with. He doesn't write fanfiction for Zelda at present and I do, so, here you go. I have not finished Spirit Tracks as of writing this – so the story will stay to early game. The best classification of the story is "sick humor." You've been warned. _

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**BUNNY STEW**

**A Spirit Tracks fanfiction-blurb by Shadsie**

The Spirit Train chugged through the interior of the Snow Realm. Link's sharp eyes were busy scanning the landscape and the tracks ahead. An engineer's job was complex enough, what with keeping an eye on the speed-gauge and boiler-pressure. The Spirit Train ran upon the same kind of steam and coal as any other train in the interior of New Hyrule, but some in the outer lands called their fuel source "magic." It was called "magic-coal" because it generated enough energy to move iron while being low-temperature enough not to harm the wood that people chose to make many parts of their trains out of. "Mundane coal" was far more dangerous, but even "magic-coal" had to be watched carefully. Boiler-explosions from collisions and other damage had taken the life of many an engineer.

An engineer also had to care for his passengers. There was safety and there was class. Trains were considered an exquisite way to travel. Alfonzo had drilled into Link's head that it was his duty to give any people that he carried during his future career a lovely time. Travel was as much about the journey as about the destination and sometimes even more so. As Link took a quick glance back at the passenger car, he knew that he didn't have to concern himself overmuch with the safety of his sole passenger. Lady Zelda was, essentially, already dead – or at least in a deathlike state. A quick look behind him told the boy that she wasn't even sitting tight and proper in the passenger car. She was floating beside the train, enjoying the feel-for whatever she could have of it – of the wind through her ectoplasm.

Looking ahead again, his attention to the rails, the sudden jerk of his muscles brought him back to not only the task at hand, but a niggling of resentment. Hands of flesh and a strong young body could do many a task that a disembodied person could not, hence why Link had drafted himself to help poor Zelda. At the same time, he found himself slightly jealous of her. While she showed great concern for him during his rougher tasks, he knew that she did not feel the burns on his skin, nor could she fathom the ache of muscles that were recovering from being frozen stiff. After the battle with the entity, Fraz, in the Snow Temple, he'd had to massage his own lightly frostbitten legs and salve and bandage the burns on his arms himself. Zelda's ghost had tried to help, but the residual images of her fingers went right through the bandages. Link had told her to stop crying because he was in a better state than she was.

"How are the fluffballs?" Link asked as Zelda floated over to him. He'd powered the train to slow so that she could catch up to him.

"They're alright. I think we should stop by the Rabbitland Rescue on our way to the Tower of Spirits. I don't think they're comfortable in that cage."

In the back of the passenger car was a wire cage with two white "grass rabbits" inside. Link had caught them on the way up to the Snow Temple when he'd driven through the grasslands. He'd questioned the man at Rabbitland Rescue at least three times concerning method. Link was given a large net which, although it was modeled after a bug-catching net with a pole and everything, was supposed to be thrown at the rabbits. Likewise, he was told that drivers didn't have to stop their trains to find rabbits – that blasting the rocks they hid on or behind with the train's bomb-cannon was sufficient for ferreting them out.

Needless to say, Link did not believe a word. The man was obviously crazy – and not in the mild, workable way that he'd grown accustomed to. Many people thought that his caretaker, Niko, was a lovable eccentric. He certainly wasn't exactly "normal," as ex-seafarers were wont to be. The guy at the Rabbitland Rescue was beyond eccentric. He wore a mascot's costume for a theme-park that hadn't even opened yet. The oversized cartoon bunny-head was frightening. The exposed paunch was even more frightening. The way he talked about his love of bunnies made Link slightly fear for the actual safety and peace of any rabbits he might bring him. Link may have been "still a child," only on the cusp of manhood – a prodigy when it came to trains and not much else, but he was far less naïve than what he was often taken for. He knew that the world was filled with people with very strange fetishes…

Still, Link had gone through the trouble of capturing a couple of rabbits for the guy. He had not used the man's suggested method, opting, instead, to stop the train entirely and to go out on the hunt on foot. Whatever was to be the fate of the rabbits, Link knew that he'd be making some money from them. He'd toured Rabbitland Rescue before he left and found many small, pleasant environments that seemed to be set up specifically for animals to play in them – all of the comforts of nature without the predators. Link decided that he was going to trust that the crazy guy in the costume really just wanted to run a zoo. He was glad that he'd taken the time to hunt like a normal hunter. Who hunts rabbits with explosives?

"They're really friendly," Zelda giggled, "the last time I looked."

"Friendly?" Link asked.

"I came out here to keep you company because they're making bunnies and I thought they needed their privacy."

Link snorted and jerked. He almost threw the train into a break. The engine wavered and rattled. "How would you know that?" he demanded. "You're…you're a princess! You're supposed to be all classy n' stuff!"

Zelda's spirit laughed, a high, tinkling sound like fairy dust. "I'm supposed to know about the world, too!" she insisted. "I'm supposed to know what I rule! Anyway, one of the castle cooks kept animals to be…um… fresh. She showed me her rabbits and cuckoos once and told me all about them. And I know they'll only make bunnies if they're a girl and a boy. They might be the same."

Link's eyes widened even more. "Well, I hope Mr. Rabbit-guy wants baby bunnies. I think the bigger one I caught was a buck and the smaller one looked like it was probably a doe."

"Buck and doe…" Zelda mused, sing-song. "Like deer."

"Yep! They know more about that stuff over in Whittleton, I think. Aboda is more about fishing."

"Hey, is that one over there?" Zelda asked. "It's a black snow rabbit! Quick! Let's get it!"

"I think there are enemies ahead, and the snow looks deep…"

"Well, try to stun it or ferret it out in the open with the train-cannon like the guy said!" Zelda suggested.

"Hunting small animals with explosives is ridiculous!" Link groused as he pulled the switch for the cannon, aiming it right for the rock where Zelda has sighted the lapin. The bomb flew and the gray stone exploded into shrapnel.

"You got it!" Zelda cheered.

Link leapt off the train, brandishing his net, thinking that he'd run up and find a stunned animal, easier to capture than eating cake. His boots crunched and slid through the snow. He tensed his shoulders and brought his net up to bring it halfway down and stare.

He'd never seen snow so red.

"Oh, no!" Zelda wept. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something she didn't think Link did – the spectral image of a rabbit with red eyes. It hissed and bounded off into the forest.

Link contemplated the mess in the snow before him. He dropped the net and gingerly picked up a furry hind foot to which was attached something resembling a spine and scraps of meat. He picked a piece of rock out of the haunch and regarded it with a sour face.

"I told you that guy was out of his gourd!" Link yelped.

"This can't be what he meant…" Zelda agreed.

"Unless it is!" Link said, his eyes lighting up in epiphany.

"What do you mean?" Zelda inquired, scrunching up her translucent image of a face.

"What if…" Link said, "What if the guy at Rabbitland isn't out to create a 'rescue' so much as a restaurant! I mean… why would someone ask me to hunt rabbits with a cannon unless he wanted fresh rabbit meat?"

Zelda was trying not to look at the remains that Link was holding at arm's length. She gazed off into the distance to the mountains. "Butchers don't work that way, Link. I could never stand to watch the killing, but I've seen dressed animal carcasses in the castle kitchen. Chefs… they like meat and bone, sometimes even livers and hearts and stuff, but they don't like rock dust and bomb shrapnel in the stew."

"Maybe I didn't do it right. If I can aim the cannon to hit the base of the rock so that too much stuff doesn't go flying off, I can kill the rabbit with a pressure wave."

"If you're going to be a hunter for hire," Zelda said, "Wouldn't it be easier to get a bow and arrows or to stalk them with your sword?"

"Yeah, but bombing them from the train is a lot quicker! All I've got to do is go down the line, then come back up it and collect bunnies!"

"I don't like this, Link…"

"Well, we want to help the guy get his restaurant started, don't we?"

"I suppose," Zelda sighed. "I'd rather get on with the main mission. I mean... I don't know how long I have…until…"

"Calm down! Calm down!" Link yelped. "It's not like I'm going to do this all at once! Just in between while we're on our way! Trains only travel so fast, anyway. Getting your body back is the whole reason I'm even out here, remember?"

He was desperate to keep her from a fearful, screaming rage. The one she'd had when they'd begun this mission was more than enough. The subject of her body was something Link tried not to broach with Zelda. He didn't blame her for being touchy about it. If his still semi-alive corpse was in the hands of creeps and demons and he didn't know what was being done to it, he'd be on edge, too.

"Alright," Zelda said. "Let's just get this over quickly."

Link wrinkled his nose at the tattered bit of meat in his hand. "Do you know any good recipes?"

* * *

The costumed man was delighted when Link presented him the mated pair of grass rabbits. He was absolutely delighted at the prospect of future young bunnies.

"You might like this even, better, sir," Link said as he walked back to his train to fetch an iron pot with a lid.

"What is this?" the man asked, "Food for my rabbits?"

"Well," Link said, toeing his boot into the ground sheepishly, "The live rabbits I caught by foot-hunting, but when I tried using my train cannon like you said… well… I figured you wanted good fresh meat." The boy lifted the lid on the pot. "It's rabbit-stew! A friend helped me make it!"

"R-r-rabbit…st-st-stew?" the man stuttered, staggering backwards.

"Yep! And I've got a lot of fresh carcasses for you, too!"

The man in the rabbit costume fainted.

"Sir?" Link asked, setting down the pot to shake his shoulder. "Sir?"

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**END. **

_The moral of the story (as provided by ArkNorth) is "Don't hunt with a hare-trigger."_


End file.
